Civilized Man

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Modern man calls himself civilized.
But this “civilized” man looks, yet cannot see.
He hears, yet does not listen.
He takes, but never puts back.

He removes the earth from one place and piles it into towering stacks he calls a city.
He says cities are for “civilized people.”
He says forests, rivers, and meadows are wild — and only the uncivilized would live there.

Civilized man believes he is brave, yet he is afraid of the earth.
He sees everything as something to dominate, control, consume, and use.
He kills anything he wants.
He holds nothing sacred.

He cuts down a tree to make paper money that can burn in an instant.
He does not see that the tree was alive.
A tree that would have given him shade when the sun grew too hot.
A tree that would have stood between him and the storm.
A tree that would have let him sleep beneath its branches.
A tree that offers medicine freely.
A tree that would even give its body to build a home for his family.

What would civilized man ever give back to that tree?

He does not consider any living being sacred.
He believes nothing has the right to live unless it benefits him.
Civilized man no longer knows how to be human.
He is an alien on his own home planet.

And for all his talk of progress, civilized man is quite uncivilized.

Only wild things kill to survive.
Only predators take without guilt.
But civilized man kills for profit.
He terrorizes and destroys.
He treats his fellow human the same way he treats the tree — by cutting other men down.

In fact, he does worse.
He drops bombs.
He starves entire villages.
He destroys farms, homes, and water systems.
He pours endless time, resources, and money into new ways of killing other humans.

Civilized man says he cannot afford to feed the hungry, yet he spends ten dollars on a coffee.
He says he cannot provide homes, yet he builds weapons without limit.
He lives in massive towers while people of his own tribe sleep beside dumpsters.

And yet he called Indigenous people uncivilized.

Indigenous societies had no homeless.
No one was left behind.
Everyone belonged.
Everyone mattered.

If this is what civilized means,
you can keep it.

Shawn Raven 
Never Give Up 

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